A Pulitzer Prize Winner and landmark book from one of the truly original scholars of our time: a magnificent revelation of turn-of-the-century Vienna where out of a crisis of political and social disintegration so much of modern art and thought was born.
Not only is it a splendid exploration of several aspects of early modernism in their political context; it is an indicator of how the discipline of intellectual history is currently practiced by its most able and ambitious craftsmen. It is also a moving vindication of historical study itself, in the face of modernism’s defiant suggestion that history is obsolete.
— David A. Hollinger, History Book Club ReviewEach of [the seven separate studies] can be read separately….Yet they are so artfully designed and integrated that one who reads them in order is impressed by the book’s wholeness and the momentum of its argument.
— Gordon A. Craig, The New RepublicA profound work…on one of the most important chapters of modern intellectual history — H.R. Trevor-Roper, front page, The New York Times Book ReviewInvaluable to the social and political historian…as well as to those more concerned with the arts — John Willett, The New York Review of BooksA work of original synthesis and scholarship. Engrossing.
— Newsweek